17
Some time later, we pulled back and Zuko remarked that I was bleeding again. He pressed a cool cloth to my head and I thought to put into words what I was feeling—which was relief, which was happiness, which was curiosity. Had his affection come from a honest place or had it been obligatory. That he knew how I felt about him and, because I had saved him, thought I was owed something.
As he pressed that cloth against my forehead, I watched him. Gauged this tension in his eyes, which was little, and the stretching of his lips, which was lax and curled upward.
I said his name and he looked at me and, removing the cloth, he kissed me again.
Zuko was convinced that I had a concussion, so he made me rest even though I had many questions needing answering and it wasn't the best time for us to stay in one place so long. But still, I slept, and I dreamed, and I woke with the sun, feeling slightly less nauseous and confused. I found Zuko at the open corner of the wall, leaning against the cracked plaster, keeping watch.
"Hey," I said, touching his shoulder, "You didn't have to stay up all night. I should have taken a round." But he waved away my words and peered down at me. He seemed satisfied that my state was improved.
"Sleep," I told him, "I'll keep watch."
"No, no, I'm fine." I inspected his eyes, which were circled by dark moons. "Really," he said and he hugged me softly. "I'm just glad you're feeling better."
I offered to fetch us fresh water, but he said that it wasn't time for me to test my strength, and in a half hour he returned with full casks of water. We ate a breakfast of jerky and dried berries and shared a sweet roll, which the barkeep at Cranefish Inn had given me before I left. I didn't tell Zuko this, not because he would be jealous, but because we had never talked about it before. That I didn't mind taking men or women to my bed. Surprisingly, we didn't have much opportunity to discuss each other's romantic life when we were together or platonic.
When we were well-fed and hydrated, I decided to broach the topic of his capture by Hui. That was the easiest place to start, but we had so much more to catch up on.
"Hui, the firebender who captured you, he called you a traitor. Why?"
Zuko smirked at my words, like he had other things in mind for our morning.
"It's complicated," he said, setting down his cask. "When I was captured during the revolt, the insurrectionists took me to an abandoned prison near Whaletail Island." It had been used during the first years of the war, but was quickly destroyed by the Earth Kingdom. I remembered reading about it when I began my search for him. But all accounts had pointed to another hideout, hundred of miles north, a successful diversion. "When they took me there, there were ten or so other inmates, most of who I never got to see after I was taken to my cell."
"Other Fire Nation officials?"
"No. Or at least, they weren't anyone I had ever met. They seemed like fairly ordinary people." Zuko looked to the small opening in the wall that spanned over the ruined city below. "My two cell neighbors spoke to each other sometimes, when the guard stepped away, and eventually, they let me in on the conversation, too." Here he glanced at me, seemed to consider how much to say. "On my left was a woman called Yoon-Mi. On my right, a man named Hui."
They spoke of a time, Zuko said, when unnamed forces would come for them. Free them. Zuko was a happenstance inclusion in this plan, merely because his two neighbors couldn't discuss their escape plans for the coming attack without him hearing.
But Zuko and Yoon-mi and Hui would spend eight months in that prison before their saviors came. In that time, Zuko was let in on some of their history. The Academy Yoon-mi had learned her bending at. The fact that Hui had spent three years in a Fire Nation prison before, during the solar eclipse, he broke free, able to overpower his firebending opponents who had never learned to fight without bending. Yoon-mi and Hui had found each other in an Earth Kingdom village attempting reconstruction, both there to help.
Then, the same group that would later abduct Zuko would try to reclaim that very Earth Kingdom village in the name of the Fire Nation and, when Yoon-mi and Hui intervened, take them prisoner. Sae-Byeok and Hua, also assisting in the village restoration efforts, would be knocked out and pinned under a destroyed building, hidden from the group's eyes.
It was only a matter of time before Sae-Byeok and Hua found them. It took them eight months, but they did. Broke down the door to the prison. Froze the guards in their steps.
"The earthbending giant and that waterbender?" I asked Zuko, remembering the first two faces of his captors I had encountered.
"They were prisoners too," Zuko said. "They never said why. Not the most talkative guys." He scooted closer to me and we both peered down the hillside of the ravaged city. It was a cool summer day and a family of raccoons scuttled along the dirt path below us. Zuko took my hand in his. He turned his face to me and his smile was a flash of those few happy months we shared during the war.
"You know who Hui is?" I asked him. His smile waned and he nodded. He had put two and two together, he said. I had told him once about my father, my years on the sea, my brother. I hadn't told him that I had been the girl offered to him at his thirteenth birthday. That under all that makeup and silk had been my unhappy self. And I didn't tell him about the Academy, because by the time I shared almost everything with him, I was too afraid to lose him.
"Did he," I started, feeling a heat rise into my cheeks, "did he ever mention me?"
Zuko held my gaze for a few moments before nodding. And I wanted to ask him more. I wanted to ask what he had said, had he hated me, did he still hate me, but I saw my answer in his eyes. And I didn't mean to, I told myself it was the concussion, the uneased state of my head, but I cried. I'd never been one to break down so easily, but I had grown so used to being alone, to roaming through the world without others' imprints on me meaning a thing—I was coming unwound.
"Hey," he said, and he hugged me, and I pressed my forehead into his chest, breathed deep the pine scent that always clung to him. I moderated myself, pulled away, and glanced out of the broken wall onto the city, the forest spanning outward, the golden glint of a bird flying low among the trees.
"I'm sorry," I said, and asked him what had happened after their escape from the prison.
And here Zuko sighed. He retreated some, tensed. He looked out over the forest, too.
"We sailed to the nearest Earth Kingdom port. Traveled for a few days. Our goal was to hit Omashu before the insurgents caught up to us, but," and he took his hand from mine and rubbed his face, "they found us. Somehow, they found us. We were in sight of Omashu when they ambushed us with double the force we had faced at the prison. We were losing. Hui was knocked out. The twins backed into a corner. They drove us apart and," he sighed. "And when I was alone against them, when I couldn't see any of the others anymore, I blinded the few insurgents who had followed me, and then I fled."
He buried his face in his knees. Exhaled hard. He didn't look at me.
He had left Hui like I had left Hui. He was a traitor escapee like I was a traitor sister.
"I get their anger," I said, "but why chase after you? Why capture you?"
"I imagine they were planning to punish me. Maim me somehow or, I don't know, maybe kill me."
I wanted to say that Hui wasn't a killer, but was that true? I wanted it to be true. But then again, he had sent Zhu Ri and I over that balcony. He must have known one of us wouldn't recover from the fall. And still, I didn't know if he had meant for me to survive the fall, but why wouldn't he? We had had a loving if complicated sibling relationship up until that moment. Wasn't he trying to save me? Wasn't his strike misplaced, overly strong? He had only meant to stop our father. Not send us over the edge.
That's what I told myself. That's why I still believed I could find him, when all was settled, and salvage our relationship.
Zuko took my hand again, his guilt settling for the moment. "I knew someone was following me. I didn't know who exactly, but on the off chance it was you—,"
"You left a sign." The cloth wrapped around a tree. The carved lotus.
Zuko nodded and I faced him, warmed by the thought that after all these years he still believed I might look for him. And while I felt joy that we had found our way to each other, I also mourned for the years we had wasted, and though I had so many more questions, I leaned in. I kissed the smooth slope of his cheek and tucked my fingers into his hair, which had grown long and wild, and felt the muscular curve of his neck. I was hungry. I had been alone too long. I welcomed his arm around my waist. I kissed him hard and he slipped my robe over my shoulders. Laid me on the cool earth. We allowed ourselves to forget the many ways we had failed each other and everyone else, if only for a moment.
